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Wednesday, September 17, 2014

I wanted to make a cake to celebrate my aunts coming up to visit from Pennsylvania. When I asked my mom what she thought I should make for them, all she said was that she thought they would like something with a flower... so this is what I came up with.

To start, I baked, leveled, filled, and frosted a six-inch cake. Then I covered it with a layer of Satin Ice vanilla fondant that I had tinted pink (with a little bit of golden yellow food coloring added in). Then I attached the pleated sections with piping gel.

To make each pleated section, I rolled out a long, thin strip of fondant, folded the rough edges under, and then laid it over a dowel to make the center pleat. Then I pinched both of the ends and attached the strip to the cake.

I chose a spot in the top/front to be my central point, which is where I connected the top of each strip. I started in the front and worked my way around to the back, alternating from one side to the other as I added the pleated strips.

As you can see, I wasn't very careful joining the strips in the center because I knew that I would be covering this part with a flower later on.

I chose a point in the back on the bottom to be my second meeting point for the pleated strips. In hindsight, I might have put a bow or something over this section.

After I had added pleats around the whole cake, I decided to drape a piece of fondant from the spot where the pleated strips met. I rounded the bottom edge of the strip and let it hang freely, without pinching the bottom edge or tucking it under.

Lastly, I added the rose. I didn't take any photos of this step because I sort of rushed through it, but making fondant/gumpaste flowers is not really my forte anyway. :-) Here is the finished cake:

Monday, September 1, 2014

My cousin asked me to create a snowboarding-themed over-the-hill cake for her sister who turned 40 in August. While it seemed like a strange time of year to be thinking about snow, I was excited for the challenge and looked forward to something different from the typical girly cakes that I normally make. I made this cake using an eight-inch round cake pan and the Wilton doll cake pan, although pretty much any pans would work.Once the layers were finished baking, leveled them (setting the scraps aside for later). I put the eight-inch tier on the bottom, covered it with chocolate frosting, and stacked the doll-shaped tier on top. Then I cut the doll tier in half and added another layer of frosting before placing the top half back onto the cake. Next, I started hacking away! I started by cutting the top of the cake at a slant. I took the piece that I cut and added it to the higher side to make it higher and wider on that side. Then I cut away a curved section to make the slope. I used all of the pieces that I cut away to make lumps and bumps in various places all over the mountain, attaching them with frosting. By the time I had finished, the cake literally looked like a pile of crap. Every time I make a cake, there is always a moment of panic when I wonder how it will ever work out; this was it.Next, I covered the cake with frosting and used a few strips of fondant to accentuate the edge of the slope.

Then I covered the cake with white fondant, carefully pressing it into all of the crevices. I didn't worry too much about the raw edges around the base, since I was planning to cover them with ice, snow, and trees.

To make the ice, I cut thick triangles of fondant and used my fingers to make indentations. Then I mixed some blue food coloring with lemon extract and brushed it over the fondant, allowing it to pool in some of the indentations. Then I attached the ice to the cake with a little bit of piping gel.

To make the trees, I rolled a piece of fondant into a cone shape, poked a bamboo skewer up through the bottom, and made several cuts in the fondant with a small pair of scissors.

Once all of the cuts had been made, I curled the ends of each bough upward with my thumb.

Then (the best part!) I sprinkled each tree with powdered sugar and added them to the cake in various places to fill the gaps.

To make the sign, I rolled out some marbled brown fondant and pressed it onto my wood grain impression mat (although scoring it with a knife would have worked equally as well). Then I cut some small notches in the sides. I placed a skewer on the back of the sign (with about three inches sticking out from the bottom to attach it to the cake later) and stuck a thin layer of fondant over it to keep it in place. Then I added the numbers (from the Wilton letter mold) and laid it flat to dry overnight. The next day, I stuck it onto the cake and rolled a strip of white fondant for the snow on the top of the sign and just below the sign. I pressed it down in a couple of places to make it look more like drifting snow.

The next part that I made was the snowboarder. I started by rolling out a little piece of blue fondant and cutting it into a rectangle, rounding the corners, to make the snowboard. I put the snowboard on a piece of styrofoam and curved the edges of the snowboard up, then put pieces of skewers under both sides. Next, I made two small balls of black fondant to press onto the snowboard for boots, and put a skewer down through one of the boots. I added small strips of fondant on top of the boots to look like straps.

For the body, I took three different sizes of black fondant, rolled them into balls, and then flattened them slightly. I stacked them on top of each other (to make a cartoonized down jacket) and cut a slit in the front. Then I stuck the jacket down onto the skewer on top of the feet. These were the sizes of the balls that I used for the jacket:

Next, I made the arms by rolling the fondant into cones. I attached them to the jacket with some piping gel. I also used slightly flattened balls of blue fondant for the mittens, making indentations near the thumbs, and then attaching them to the bottoms of the arms with a dab of piping gel.

The next piece I added was the head. I made a ball of peach-colored fondant and stuck it on top of the jacket, onto the skewer. Then I rolled out a thin circle of black fondant and put it over the head to make a hat/hood. For the glasses, I flattened two balls of blue fondant into circles, pressed them together in the center, and then cut the top. Then I used the back of the knife to make a line across the top of the glasses. I made the nose with a tiny ball of peach fondant, and I used a frosting tip to make a semicircular indentation for the mouth. Since I wanted to make my snowboarder look a little bit more feminine, I used two small chunks of fondant to make bangs, and I added a scarf. To make the scarf, I cut a long, thin strip of blue fondant and wrapped it around the snowboarder's neck. I used my small scissors to cut the frays into the ends of the scarf.

After I added the snowboarder, I made the letters with the Wilton letter mold. I chose to make them with white fondant and brush on some of the blue food coloring mixture that I used for the ice. I attached them to the slope with a little bit of piping gel.

Lastly, I added some snowballs. This wasn't part of my original design, but I had put a the sign in a place that I decided that I didn't want it (on the front of the slope), so there was a hole from the skewer that I needed to cover up... which is why I decided to add some snowballs. :-) I ended up putting a few near the top of the slope, a couple in the middle, and three near the bottom/front, where the sign was originally located. And that's it!